I understand your hesitation and appreciate the need of proof for my employment. I hope JohnC post/link helps clear some of the doubts (if not all). Roy Taylor's August 3rd tweet...

Also, please understand I'm trying to help lots of communities. And for now, I will post similar information (probably copying and pasting the same articles I write) across the various sites. Is not that I'm lazy, but I'm shooting for efficiency and speed

Sam is my real name, and Warsam71 it's my gaming name...I've used it for a long long time as gaming is something I love doing. I chose to share both with you as I hope to run into some of you online (while I play WoWP)...

Dear Sam,I would like to preface this by saying that I really appreciate that AMD is participating in the TR community forums. I believe that this kind of line of sight to end users is what will help differentiate AMD in the future from it's competitors.

My only query, and it's a small one, is Why hasn't Multithreaded Display/Driver command lists in DX11/11.1 been implemented in Catalyst drivers? (and a small follow up of, "if it is going to be implemented, can we have some indication of roughly when?")

Rumors surround this, and say things like "it's not worth the programming time/it doesn't benefit us that much", there is also much griping by developers such as DICE about it. AMD has yet to provide end users with a reasonable response, and the question has been asked many times. Considering the code probably exists,it baffles me as to why this has been implemented in openGL but not DirectX.

While this is not a critical issue, as games such as Civ V which implement this feature can work around it, it gives me pause for thought, as this will become a bottleneck for performance moving forward, and is one way that AMD can capitalise better on muticore processors.

chuckula wrote:OK how about these, which are asked from a Linux/open source user perspective:

1. When are you going to start treating Catalyst on Linux as a first-class citizen in the same manner that Nvidia does with its own drivers. By first-class, I mean as close to feature and performance parity with Windows as possible and having support for new versions of Xorg* BEFORE they are released instead of 6 months later. The reason I'm asking is that I'm basically stuck with Nvidia on Linux if I want a performance GPU (I have no overt love of Nvidia, but I also like things that work).

Pages like this one from my distro (Arch Linux) don't inspire confidence. I do give AMD props for open-source support, but frankly it's only good for maintaining basal compatibility with obsolete cards. There's nothing wrong with that, but AMD shouldn't ignore performance Linux, especially when a large portion of the HPC world uses Linux heavily and Nvidia has made some real money in that realm. So: What is AMD's plan for the future of Catalyst on non-Windows platforms?

(* Oh, EGL support and Wayland support in Catalyst would be a huge win too).

2. FX is dead and we all know that AMD has been subtly telegraphing that message since at least late 2012. Now that AMD has gone APU-only, what kinds of improvements are we going to see with HSA that will translate into real-world performance and power/performance benefits? I'm asking because I've seen plenty of fragile, windows-only demos of OpenCL, but precious few real-world applications and day to day apps that use OpenCL. I'm not singling AMD out here, BTW, I defintely *don't* see CUDA applications on a day to day basis outside of esoteric compute workloads either (e.g. BOINC or things like that). What I am saying is that there is a big difference between a few benchmarks and real-world performance across a wide-range of applications.

This is much more critical for AMD because your own marketing department has pretty much written off high-end x86 performance (including vector-extensions to x86) in favor of OpenCL. Well, in the open source world there are even fewer applications that can benefit from OpenCL than on Windows. So, what is AMD's plan to push OpenCL software to a wider audience including cross-platform development?

3. Related in part to the above issues with Catalyst, what is AMD's policy going forward on devices with Android & ChromeOS? Chips like Temash have potential for high-envelope tablet and chromebook products that could have very good performance and graphics if there is driver support. It is encouraging to see that Temash is no longer Windows exclusive but more support of Android and other alternatives is always welcome.

Here's a related question to tablets: Will AMD be willing to be better than the ARM licensees and Intel by working with partners to sell fully unlocked x86 tablets where the consumer (not some OEM or even worse a phone company) has control over the software that is installed? Is AMD willing to sell us unlocked tablets where we can choose a Linux distro that will actually run? Or windows 8? Or a non-OEM doctored version of Android? I really want to know because I'm more than willing to take back tablets from being toys into being real personal computing devices if companies like AMD will step up and sell unlocked devices.

Hi Chuckula - Looking at your tablet question. We create an array of CPU and APU solutions to enable partners with hardware that suits the vision for their product. We provide the exceptional raw performance and the feature-rich platform, but at the end, it's up to the OEM to determine/decide how the software and hardware should function in the field.

Warsam71 wrote:Hi Chuckula - Looking at your tablet question. We create an array of CPU and APU solutions to enable partners with hardware that suits the vision for their product. We provide the exceptional raw performance and the feature-richplatform, but at the end, it's up to the OEM to determine/decide how the software and hardware should function in the field.

I'm really interested in purchasing a notebook in the near-ish future. Would you please be able to tell me if there are any notebooks coming out that come in a 11.6" to 13.3" form factor and use the Kabini E2-3000 chip? If you can find out you don't have to drop names but I would like to know if something is even coming out. *EDIT* - This is for the US market, by the way.

Hi there, Sam. Welcome to the Tech Report forums, the official forum of one of the most interestly PC tech websites currently known to geekdom despite having some occasional wackos posting nonsensical comments. We actually had someone from AMD a few years ago here. While he answered questions it's somewhat obvious that he was here to help people buy AMD. Too bad he also gets somewhat hotheaded when people disagree with him. It's like he lives in his own sort of little world where AMD is simply the best choice for everything. I hope you're nowhere like him.

For the record I have used more AMD products than any other competing brand. That means I've used far more AMD processors than Intel, and more AMD/ATI graphics cards than Nvidia. Running an FX-8350 these days and I love it. You could say I'm an AMD fan but unlike most AMD fanbois I give criticism to AMD when they deserve it for being less than awesome. Nonetheless, I'd exhaust all my AMD options first before I even start considering buying Intel.

I have some questions regarding AMD's future plans but I guess some gerbils beat me to the punch, so I'll just sit back and let the replies come in. Thanks for joining AMD in a position designed to reach out to your customers.

As you get older, you don't lose your friends.. you just find out who the real ones are.

Warsam71 wrote:Hi Chuckula - Looking at your tablet question. We create an array of CPU and APU solutions to enable partners with hardware that suits the vision for their product. We provide the exceptional raw performance and the feature-richplatform, but at the end, it's up to the OEM to determine/decide how the software and hardware should function in the field.

jazper wrote:Dear Sam,I would like to preface this by saying that I really appreciate that AMD is participating in the TR community forums. I believe that this kind of line of sight to end users is what will help differentiate AMD in the future from it's competitors.

My only query, and it's a small one, is Why hasn't Multithreaded Display/Driver command lists in DX11/11.1 been implemented in Catalyst drivers? (and a small follow up of, "if it is going to be implemented, can we have some indication of roughly when?")

Rumors surround this, and say things like "it's not worth the programming time/it doesn't benefit us that much", there is also much griping by developers such as DICE about it. AMD has yet to provide end users with a reasonable response, and the question has been asked many times. Considering the code probably exists,it baffles me as to why this has been implemented in openGL but not DirectX.

While this is not a critical issue, as games such as Civ V which implement this feature can work around it, it gives me pause for thought, as this will become a bottleneck for performance moving forward, and is one way that AMD can capitalise better on muticore processors.

I look forward to your response.

Warm regardsJaz

Depends on the developer. Meaning, we offer the developer the hardware to support whatever programming model they use, but we don't depend on any specific threading model to achieve excellent performance

jazper wrote:Dear Sam,I would like to preface this by saying that I really appreciate that AMD is participating in the TR community forums. I believe that this kind of line of sight to end users is what will help differentiate AMD in the future from it's competitors.

My only query, and it's a small one, is Why hasn't Multithreaded Display/Driver command lists in DX11/11.1 been implemented in Catalyst drivers? (and a small follow up of, "if it is going to be implemented, can we have some indication of roughly when?")

Rumors surround this, and say things like "it's not worth the programming time/it doesn't benefit us that much", there is also much griping by developers such as DICE about it. AMD has yet to provide end users with a reasonable response, and the question has been asked many times. Considering the code probably exists,it baffles me as to why this has been implemented in openGL but not DirectX.

While this is not a critical issue, as games such as Civ V which implement this feature can work around it, it gives me pause for thought, as this will become a bottleneck for performance moving forward, and is one way that AMD can capitalise better on muticore processors.

I look forward to your response.

Warm regardsJaz

Depends on the developer. Meaning, we offer the developer the hardware to support whatever programming model they use, but we don't depend on any specific threading model to achieve excellent performance

Sorry Sam,you didn't answer my question:My only query, and it's a small one, is Why hasn't Multithreaded Display/Driver command lists in DX11/11.1 been implemented in Catalyst drivers? (and a small follow up of, "if it is going to be implemented, can we have some indication of roughly when?")

jazper wrote:Sorry Sam,you didn't answer my question:My only query, and it's a small one, is Why hasn't Multithreaded Display/Driver command lists in DX11/11.1 been implemented in Catalyst drivers? (and a small follow up of, "if it is going to be implemented, can we have some indication of roughly when?")

We could make a whole page of questions that he hasn't addressed; I'm failing to see his purpose here. We don't need marketing help in the forums, the TR Editorial Team does a far better job, and they're definitely more objective.

I don't see the point of having a paid 'marketing shill' on the forums if he can't address the issues that forum members bring.

For me- I still want to know what the breadth of his job is. What forums/communities is Sam officially participating in? Ignoring that question is pretty telling.

I’ve been in the gaming industry for more than a decade, where I have worked on numerous titles including Tomb Raider, Hitman Contracts, Just Cause, 25 To Life, Age of Conan, Alice Madness Returns and Rift to name a few (phew), and currently playing in the open beta of World of Warplanes by Wargaming.net. My first console was the Atari 2600, followed by the Commodore 32 and 64, Intellivision, all the PlayStations and X-Boxes…you get the idea.

On the PC front - I started with an 80286 processor based PC where I played a golf game on a monochrome screen, and got my first taste of the “pre-internet era” via BBSes, remember? From there I went through every processor type and played hundreds of FPS and Action Games (i.e. from Wolfenstein 3D to every COD).

I’m gonna be the guy behind “^ST” on the @AMDGaming Twitter handle, and you can also follow me @Samshaw71.

I’m here to help you in any way I can guys. So, feel free to message me with any thoughts, comments, issues and ideas you may have. I will be reading threads, participating and asking you lots of questions!

Sam ignored my post about high-end CPU/GPU offerings from AMD and its ability to compete with Intel/Nvidia. This leads me to believe that they will concentrate on APUs and leave high-end for Intel/Nvidia.

michael_d wrote:Sam ignored my post about high-end CPU/GPU offerings from AMD and its ability to compete with Intel/Nvidia. This leads me to believe that they will concentrate on APUs and leave high-end for Intel/Nvidia.

michael_d wrote:Sam ignored my post about high-end CPU/GPU offerings from AMD and its ability to compete with Intel/Nvidia. This leads me to believe that they will concentrate on APUs and leave high-end for Intel/Nvidia.

...or he hasn't been cleared to answer the question?

Which he can say. Saying nothing, however, does not help his position.

Warsam71 wrote:Depends on the developer. Meaning, we offer the developer the hardware to support whatever programming model they use, but we don't depend on any specific threading model to achieve excellent performance

Uh oh. 'Excellent' performance?

Yup. You're from AMD marketing.

As you get older, you don't lose your friends.. you just find out who the real ones are.

michael_d wrote:Sam ignored my post about high-end CPU/GPU offerings from AMD and its ability to compete with Intel/Nvidia. This leads me to believe that they will concentrate on APUs and leave high-end for Intel/Nvidia.

...or he hasn't been cleared to answer the question?

Which he can say. Saying nothing, however, does not help his position.

Unanswered questions should be expected in this situation. We all know what to expect from an official AMD representative: certain things will be off limits, won't comment on future plans he's not allowed to comment on, probably won't directly address anything concerning a competitor or a competitor's products, etc.

It's a nice gesture when companies do this, and I don't think it's anything we should resent, but at the same time this is really nothing more than a nice gesture and at best a source for official information that has already be cleared for public disclosure. Warsam isn't going to out any secrets or let loose any revelations.

It would be nice if Nvidia did the same.

What I am not a fan of is stealth marketing or when someone is getting paid to trash talk the competition and spread any kind of FUD. That stuff is clearly not what Warsam is here for.

Btw, Sam, just a friendly tip from your TR community. I like AMD and I want AMD to be a more professional company, whether it's in its Powerpoint slides, the way they talk about their competitors, the way they talk about past employers and what they did there, the way they talk about their products, etc. You almost never see Intel bash other companies' products. You don't see Intel hype their product all the way to Mars only to let the final product perform below expectations. It's all about simply being honest and not pushing the product in every way possible. Just look back at the original Bulldozer launch. AMD marketers hyped it so much but people aren't stupid. AMD just needs to be honest and keep a straight face. It's an area where AMD can grow as a company that is admired not just by its fanbois, but by the industry and consumers as well. Push real product, not hype and dishonesty, and you gain respect.

By the way, does Roy Taylor really like doing 'sexy and exciting things'? Maybe he also likes whips and chains? Just kidding, man. But you do get my point, right? You don't catch Intel people saying things like that.

As you get older, you don't lose your friends.. you just find out who the real ones are.

Welcome to this flock of very knowledgeable Gerbil's and Gerbil Jedi's Sam.

I have only one 2 part question. Is AMD working to try to get single core performance on par with Intel? Just like like Bulldozer AMD's Piledriver/Trinity module we see two integer CPU-cores which both share a floating point unit and a 2MB L2 cache. Has AMD tried or ever made a engineering sample of a bulldozer/piledriver or some how disabled one core per module, by using one core per module so the integer CPU-core would not have to share a floating point unit and a 2MB L2 cache ? I would love to see the comparitive benchamrks of that conceptual true quad core against a fx-4000 series chip that shares the floating point unit and L2?

"EDIT"And one more thing, Why no die shrink of phenom 2 with improvements in the cache bandwidth and on boards memory controller?

I also would like to not i was and still am a AMD fanboy. My x86 life started with a pentium 60 to 120 via a upgrade chip to a p2 300. Then my love affair with AMD sprung up starting with a 900 Tbird to a 1400 Tbird to a 2400xp all on the same ECS K7S5a motherboard. Then a water cooled 940 pin fx-53 to a 939 pin 4800x2 water cooler swapped from fx-53. I also had 2 AM2 3250e 1.5ghz powered Dell HD Zino's with mobile hd-4330s. Then 2 1/2 years ago i had to get a 2600k gaming rig. Performance was too good to stick with AMD any longer.

Last edited by vargis14 on Fri Aug 09, 2013 3:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hi again Sam. Thanks for taking our questions. As you've seen from quite a few people on this forum, there are some very technically minded people here that aren't afraid to pull punches. This isn't an easy place for a marketer from AMD or from any company, so kudos to you for jumping in the shark tank!

I'll back-up what ronch already said a couple of posts up: Be classy and be realistic with any projections you make. I'm reminded of one of the old car commercials with Ricardo Montalban (not the famous Corinthian Leather one, but it was also for Chrysler). Anyway, to paraphrase Ricardo says "The competition is good, but Chrysler is better." That's the way you want to approach things in pushing for AMD.

I don't think anyone here should expect you to give us any information beyond that which is available through official channels. So, I don't expect you to tell us when Kaveri is coming and whether it will be 80% faster or anything like that. However, I think it would be nice if you could give OUR feedback to the company. The enthusiast market is growing and enthusiasts are a picky bunch. I imagine you want to keep them happy and you need to know what they want.

That being said, I'm happy with the Crossfire frame pacing driver. Great job, tell that to the developers in charge. On the other hand, Kabini availability is not good. I really want a cheap 13.3" notebook with a decent panel and I can't find anything other than Brazos. As a matter of fact, in the local market (Switzerland) the biggest e-tailer offers no less than 407 intel notebooks versus 10(!!) AMD. You should really take a look into that, otherwise I can't give you my money, even if I want to.

Good to see AMD having the balls to turn up so welcome although I can see more downside for this than upside; having a marketing guy talk to tech enthusiasts is a risky proposition. With AMD’s difficulties in the CPU area and the perception (from my experience) that they have been prone to delays followed by disappointments I would feel defensive if I was an AMD representative. To balance that out I think the APUs and GPUs are looking strong.

The first thing I will say is to kick Roy Taylor in the derriere as his attempt to seem kool look embarrassing:

"On the APU side, I’m pushing to do something sexy and exciting there too. Watch that space. Personally, I’m a huge fan of doing sexy and exciting stuff."

If he didn’t look 50 it would be bad enough but as he does it’s just embarrassing X2 FX (Flipping Xtremely).

It would be good to know whether Kaveri is actually delayed or not. The bottom line for me is that it appears to be late so if it is I think you gain trust by admitting that. If it isn’t then I guess you are in a no win situation as the perception seems to be that it is late. You might be better off saying that it is late but I know that marketing departments are averse to lying on moral grounds.

Sam why are you not using your signature to link to an official AMD endorsement ?

We shouldn't have to play detective and have some AMD guy have to blog "yes, Its legit"...Sam, I strongly suggest that you update your signature with verifiable credential. What you are doing is not professional and doesn't help AMD get ride of its monkey business stigma.

Having said that. A lot of the questions I see posted cannot be answered by Sam, even if he knew the answers.Sam, the right thing to do is answer all question honestly. "I dont have access to this information", "I cannot release this information", etc..Dont skip the one you dont like, and just answer only a selected few with marketing slang.

ptsant wrote:I don't think anyone here should expect you to give us any information beyond that which is available through official channels.

Of course.

ptsant wrote:However, I think it would be nice if you could give OUR feedback to the company.

That is not how that really works - for feedback collection there are plenty of existing resources like AMD's own http://www.amdsurveys.com (for collection of driver-related feedback), http://developer.amd.com/community/, as well as from various 3rd-party forums like more technically-oriented Beyond3D (hi Dave!) or more consumer-oriented Rage3D and from some online reviews/benchmarks like the Scott's breakthrough "frame time" articles. Plus, of course, directly from software developer partners (like DICE/EA) as well as hardware OEMs (like Asus/XFX/Gigabyte and others). A primary job of marketing "representative" is to spread the "brand awareness" and information about brand's "product superiority" through various means.

My subscription allows you people to exist on this site and makes me a better human being than you'll ever be

flip-mode wrote:Unanswered questions should be expected in this situation. We all know what to expect from an official AMD representative: certain things will be off limits, won't comment on future plans he's not allowed to comment on, probably won't directly address anything concerning a competitor or a competitor's products, etc.

I don't agree that it's OK to completely ignore an 'uncomfortable' question. If the guy want to build any credibility at all, I think he's somewhat obligated to make a simple reply such as, "I'm sorry, I can't comment on that." To leave the issue unaddressed is 'typical,' but that doesn't mean it's not also somewhat rude and decidedly slippery. I for one would like to see less 'slippery' coming from Corporate America.

To all, As mentioned, I need to adhere to certain policies and can't expand or provide additional information on undisclosed services and products.

But please feel free to PM me.

I welcome PMs as they allow me to keep track of everything more efficiently. You can ask me anything (on existing products/services) and if I won't know the answer right away I will ping my team which is made of various people: product managers, tech product managers, engineers, community managers, customer support, marketers, and specialists.

If you're going to be a representative to the community, asking for PM's rather than actually answering questions in a forum that you intend to represent your company in.

Why are you ignoring questions in the thread you started? Is it hard to hit 'Reply' and say, 'no, I can't answer that' or 'I don't know that answer, let me get back to you'? Do you think that ignoring questions outright while answering others represents AMD in a positive light?

AMD has stumbled and stumbled, and stumbled again in recent years- and their stumblings are the result of their own decisions. Don't expect to join this forum, or any tech forum, if you're not committed.

And you don't sound committed. Are you sure AMD is getting their money's worth from you?